I refuse to be judged by the values of another culture. I am a Black woman, and I will stand as best I can in that imagery.
-- Bernice Reagon, “Black Women and Liberation Movements”

The assaults of late on Black women are not new. Since we entered this country, we’ve been repeatedly diminished, made invisible, criticized, denigrated, defined, and labeled to fit images that served to strip us of our innate power and strength. We’ve suffered through a myriad of assaults on our hair; facial features; hips and butts; and big, boisterous, opinionated, and aggressive personalities, attitudes, and expressions – all of which, to this country, are too big and too much which equate to us not being enough. It’s some hard work defending ourselves while trying to live good and honest lives amid the onslaught of attacks. Makes you wanna holler!

So what are we to do? How do we stop the assaults? Well, really, we can’t. People will say, do, and feel as they wish, no matter how many times or how much they’re penalized, yelled at, or told how nasty their assaults are. You just can’t stop the assaults.

Or can you?

I’m convinced that what’s most important in any situation is your response and reaction in it. When you’re trounced and judged because of your race, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, age, socioeconomic status, whatever, and you find yourself angry and insulted, and your only remedy is to require an apology then demand they never be seen in public again, you’re only operating on the surface of the issue, and on that easy level, nothing gets resolved. At least not for you.

In order for the assaults to no longer affect us, we’ve got to look deeper at how they impact us, why they chafe so, and how we protect ourselves so that the steady stream of attacks simply roll off our backs and not slip into our epidermis to further infest us with more debilitating doubt about our worth, beauty, femininity, and capabilities. We’ve got to ask and search ourselves about what was said or done that caused the pang and twinge in us when we heard or saw it. Was there something we recognized? Were we reminded of the ancient and deep-rooted perceptions and notions of us created in slavery and passed down from generation to generation; perceptions that we ingested consciously and unconsciously that we’ve not examined, worked out, or stopped and which, in due course, have caused raw, sore, and angry places within us that make every rude and discourteous uttering, sound bite, and gesture an attack on who we are and can’t help but be – Black women?

Have we accepted everything derogatory ever said about us and allowed it to be our measuring stick for the way society sees and regards us? Instead of shielding and protecting ourselves from the assaults by defining ourselves for ourselves and not becoming complacent when the subject is not about us, we cry foul when the assaults come raining in then demand no one has a right to do or say such things. But really, they have just as much right to say and do offensive things as you have right to protect your psyche and esteem from being turned upside down by the barrage of offenses.

Of course, this is not to suggest the assaults should be ignored. On the contrary, they should be dealt with and the perpetrators held accountable. But only on the premise that the assaults are rude, an intrusion to the function and fabric of society, and offensive to every single person who hears and sees them, not because they’ve hurt us and bent a little more of our already fragile collective esteem.
It doesn’t matter what anyone says or feels about you; they’re going to say it and feel it forever. What matters is what you respond to and how you allow it to shape or misshape your life. Maybe if they see it doesn’t deter us or really change who we are or how we produce and contribute, just maybe they’d stop assaulting us.

Sadiqqa © 2007